Ender 5 + Plus - Stops pushing filament after a few layers

Filament 3D Printer Technical Help
1

I have had my Ender 5+ for about 4 years now.

I haven’t used it for a few months, as I have other printers that I prefer using.

I recently fired up the 5+ again and I am having a reoccurring problem where my prints will work as they should for the first 15 to 100 layers and then it just stops being able to push filament through the hot end.

I changed the printing nozzle to a new one because I thought it might clogged. I tested the Capricorn bowden tube and that seems to be ok.

I think there might be something wrong with either the extruder or the filament. The filament was air sealed and it was freshly opened when I started using it. This leads me to beleive that it might be more related to the extruder.

Any suggestions on something else I might be missing? Is there potentially something wrong with the extruder that is fixable ? Do I have to swap out the extruder ?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

2

Sounds like it could be a heat creep issue,

Can you double check that the hotend fan is spinning properly?

Matthew

1 Like
3

Hey Matthew

Thanks for the quick response. Just testing it out now on a print.

Of the two fans on the hot end assembly are you referring to the one that is on the front of the assembly. In other words, when facing the front of the machine, it would be the fan that you are facing directly, not the one on the side, would that be accurate ?

The fan on the side of the assembly which feeds the exhaust that blows on the nozzle is working

The fan at the front of the assembly does not appear to working at all…nice catch.

If the fan requires replacing, is it possible to just replace the fan or do I need to replace the entire cage assembly ? Do you have any suggestions on fixes other than replacing the fan (i.e. loose wire/connection etc.)

Thanks

4

Aha, this will probably be heat creep then. The fan facing the front of the machine is the one responsible for cooling the hotend and the one(s) at the side are responsible for cooling the part.

If the hotend gets too hot it will start to prematurely melt the plastic which will cause your problem, this is a fairly simple fix however. You will not need to replace the whole fan shroud, you can just unscrew it and unscrew the fan on the inside. Once this is done you can splice the cable or completely remove it and reroute a new one. You can find a link to purchase a new one on our website, but any similar one should work, just double check that it is 24V!

If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Matt

5

Thanks @Matthew

I think I know what caused the fan to fail which leads me to another concern

I was cleaning off my Ender 5+ and took a vacuum cleaner to pick up all the small pieces of filament that had built up over time

I placed the vacuum over the front of the fan assembly to clean some filament whisps which then caused the fan to spin at what I suspect was a much faster speed then the fan was spec’d for. I am wondering if that might sent current back to the motherboard and done some damage there.

In your opinion Is that even possible ?

Thanks

6

Hey there,

This is a possibility for sure, although personally I wouldn’t worry about it. Most of the mainboards nowadays have protections against this.

If you replace the fan and still find you are having issues then it is something we can thing about but it would really surprise me if it ended up happening.

Matt